Per Ardua Ad Astra

Ok, I think I’m finished with my Eugenics essay and I need help in reviewing it. Other than completely scrapping the draft, is there anything that you would like to point out? Better still if you guys could blast it to pieces. Abstract first, then the paragraph used for the essay, then the essay itself. Thanks!

Abstract

This essay’s motive is to examine Francis Galton’s reasoning behind not making a careful consideration of morality when discussing his ideas on eugenics in his essay ‘Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims’ published in The American Journal of Sociology Volume X; July, 1904; Number 1. The thesis of this essay is to prove that Galton’s ideas have noble aims but its argument is not sufficiently cogent in proving that the question of morality could be safely set aside in the deliberations of eugenics and ultimately proving that eugenics is in the best interests of society. While Galton may have a valid point in arguing that discussions concerning morality at such a preliminary stage are inconvenient to the advancement of eugenics, ignoring morality as a guide to the application of science is a bigger risk at hand. Also, Galton’s arguments based on elaborate analogy to the application of eugenics to society and the suggested desirable traits to be selected for are based on flawed cultural assumptions and unsubstantiated assumptions on character ‘qualities’. As such, the utopian view presented by Galton may be tempting but the reality is that Galton’s ideas would be impractical and would not necessarily result in tangible benefits to society due to poor characterisation of the methods of eugenics and its moral validity.

ANNOTATED PAPER 1: CLOSE READING

Name: Tan Huei Ming

Course Code and Title: UWC2101K Questioning Evolution and Progress

Lecturer: Dr. Andrew Leng

Paper 1: Close Reading

Date: 30^th August 2006

Practicality of Galton’s Eugenics without Moral Considerations

     EXTRACT FOR CLOSE READING

What is meant by improvement? What by the syllable eu in "eugenics," whose English equivalent is "good"? There is considerable difference between goodness in the several qualities and in that of the character as a whole. The character depends largely on the proportion between qualities, whose balance may be much influenced by education. We must therefore leave morals as far as possible out of the discussion, not entangling ourselves with the almost hopeless difficulties they raise as to whether a character as a whole is good or bad. Moreover, the goodness or badness of character is not absolute, but relative to the current form of civilization. A fable will best explain what is meant. Let the scene be the zoological gardens in the quiet hours of the night, and suppose that, as in old fables, the animals are able to converse, and that some very wise creature who had easy access to all the cages, say a philosophic sparrow or rat, was engaged in collecting the opinions of all sorts of animals with a view of elaborating a system of absolute morality. It is needless to enlarge on the contrariety of ideals between the beasts that prey and those they prey upon, between those of the animals that have to work hard for their food and the sedentary parasites that cling to their bodies and suck their blood, and so forth. A large number of suffrages in favor of maternal affection would be obtained, but most species of fish would repudiate it, while among the voices of birds would be heard the musical protest of the cuckoo. Though no agreement could be reached as to absolute morality, the essentials of eugenics may be easily defined. All creatures would agree that it was better to be healthy than sick, vigorous than weak, well-fitted than ill-fitted for their part in life; in short, that it was better to be good rather than bad specimens of their kind, whatever that kind might be. So with men. There are a vast number of conflicting ideals, of alternative characters, of incompatible civilizations; but they are wanted to give fullness and interest to life. Society would be very dull if every man resembled the highly estimable Marcus Aurelius or Adam Bede. The aim of eugenics is to represent each class or sect by its best specimens; that done, to leave them to work out their common civilization in their own way.

- from Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims by Francis Galton

Practicality of Galton’s Eugenics without Moral Considerations

In Galton’s treatise ‘Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims’, he argued in favour of setting aside issues of morality in discussing eugenics. For the uninitiated, eugenics is a scientific branch that dealt with influences that will improve the innate traits of a race and developing the race to the utmost advantage. Because eugenics have social applications, the moral ramifications would be immense, yet Galton chose to waive moral considerations when discussing eugenics. In this essay, the author would attempt to examine the second paragraph of Galton’s article and determine whether Galton is justified in ignoring morality when arguing in favour of eugenics.

Galton rationalised his actions in excluding morality from deliberation by elucidating the difficulties that would be encountered by eugenics as it attempts to improve society. He stated that it will entangle eugenists with ‘almost hopeless difficulties’ when considering whether a person is good or bad as a whole. He also recognises the fact that goodness or badness is not absolute, but relative to the current form of civilisation. Here, Galton is being vague with the notion of good and bad, indicating a lack of definite stand on classifying characteristics. Without proper definition, eugenics should not be allowed to proceed any further to avoid any tragic mistakes from being made. Since Galton admits that it is not a completely hopeless matter to untangle good from bad, time should taken in coming up with a proper definition before rapidly expanding the field of eugenics.

Granted, eugenics is a new scientific idea, so Galton may have a valid point in claiming that excessive moralistic considerations in eugenics could stifle its development. Usually, scientific developments are slowly cultivated with plenty of time for moral considerations, hence minimising the chances of potential misuse. However, Galton gives the impression that there is a sense of urgency in applying eugenics to society. This may be due to the perception of degeneration at work within Victorian society, which forewarns the collapse of the British Empire paralleling Lankester’s example of the Roman Empire’s collapse due to degeneration of Roman society. Given the cultural influences on Galton’s work, the sense of urgency is understandable, but it does not justify the modification of society without first examining the moral issues involved.

Besides that, Galton mentioned that ‘character depends largely on the proportion between qualities, whose balance may be much influenced by education’. Here, the characterisation of character is only qualitative but Galton did suggest that a systematic collection of facts be done to properly understand the conditions of eugenics later on in his dissertation. This is done for the purpose of determining the suitable characteristics present in parents to be selected for in eugenics. However, Galton did not reconcile the contradiction of the huge influence of education in the final state of character to the utility of eugenics. Education could not be regulated by eugenics, as it is a social issue rather than a biological trait to be managed. Not only that, he failed to be specific with the generic term ‘qualities’. For the purpose of this analysis, this author assumes that qualities refers to some physical trait that could be discretely classified as good or bad and both groups are mutually exclusive. Good is also assumed to be a beneficial trait, and vice versa.

An analogy was supplied in the form of a fable, where animals with intelligence and conversational ability attempted to elaborate a system of ‘absolute morality’. Curiously, Galton chose to confer cognitive capabilities usually associated only with humans to animals. As far as we know, animals do not talk and think in the way we do. This results in a high degree of artificiality for the analogy, making it hard to properly evaluate its usefulness in illustrating Galton’s points unless the species in the analogy is meant to be a direct substitute for human races. The author proceeds with the assumption that this is indeed the case.

Galton pointed out the difficulty of consensus on absolute morality due to different value judgements placed on physical characteristics by differing species. He assumed that decisions made on a consensus would invariably be right, which is doubtful. He thought that defining the essentials of eugenics is easy, as evident by statements that it was better to be healthy than sick, vigorous than weak and et cetera. Using Galton’s own example of sedentary parasites and its host, eventually the host will end up weak and the parasite vigorous. Therefore, it is actually not an easy task. Galton also envisions eugenics to represent the best of groups of people and then allow them to collectively form a common civilisation. But, if only a specific set of desired ‘qualities’ are selected for, it would create homogeneity given a uniform environment. This homogeneity would lead to a dull society, which in Galton’s view would be a negative.

Galton had a noble aim in trying to improve human society. However, it is too utopian and impractical in implementation. He is being hasty in arriving at his equations due to perceptions of urgent need of eugenics in society and had neglected morality. By doing so, he may be doing more harm than good. In conclusion, Galton may have erred in completely evading the issue of morality completely, overgeneralising certain aspects of his argument and not being careful in carefully defining the parameters to control in eugenics.

I came back to Recom.org to see if there’s anything new, and there’s the usual news on Pluto’s new title. Looking back at what I had posted, I was quite shocked at what I had wrote more than 2 years ago. It’s nothing controversial, but it gives an idea on how much time I had last time. For those of you who wondered at what makes a planet a planet, this would a great help. Yep, it’s outdated, but the considerations are still relevant to the issue even today. Maybe if I have the free time, I might just do a ‘2 years later, the follow-up’ post. Here’s the post, with some minor touch-ups.

Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 9:52 pm    Post subject:   

Hie everyone, just to contribute some additional info to the planet status classification.

As far as I know, the IAU arbitrarily assigns the planet status according to their choosing, since there are no clearly defined set of criterions for a celestial object to be classified as a planet. If you have noticed in your search for a conclusive answer, the IAU and many other sources on astronomy do not have an official definition of the term ‘planet’. This is largely because the general population instinctively knows what is meant when you use the term planet.

Consequently, as the IAU tries to define what constitutes a planet, the major thorny issue they have to sort through this is the problem of Pluto. Most mainstream astronomers today agrees that it shouldn’t be called a planet in the first place, but the public had gradually grown attached to Pluto as the ninth planet! It is generally accepted among the astronomical community today that Pluto is in fact a Trans-Neptunian Object orbiting the Sun alongside thousands of other asteroids in the Kupier Belt.

Now, the key points in defining a planet are as follows: it’s mass, possession of celestial bodies and its type of orbit. All these parameters and others are currently being hotly debated in the quest to settle this problem for once and for all.

It is argued that a planet must be of sufficient mass so that the object has sufficient gravity to have a spherical shape, which will distinguish them from asteroids. The problem is on deciding the bottom limit of the object to be classified as a planet and its upper limit to distinguish it from brown dwarfs. This would be to Pluto’s advantage, since it does have sufficient mass to hold itself together, even though some moons in the Solar System are larger than it! As for the upper limit, it must also not be too massive or else it will be taken into consideration as a brown dwarf. But thankfully these burn deuterium, or else Jupiter’s status is also threatened.

Another one is that it must possess a moon, but this is debatable as Pluto has Charon, but the innermost 2 planets have none! Furthermore, some asteroids also have its own companion, which added to the problem of using this as a criterion.

Pluto and Sedna both have the most erractic orbits among all the planets in the Solar System. So astronomers argue that both of them should not be classified as planets since their orbits are not as regular as the other planets. Furthermore Sedna could possibly be part of the Oort Cloud as it is currently 86 AU from the Sun, compared to Pluto’s average distance of 39.5 AU! Pluto’s orbit is also inclined with respect to the Solar System’s plane, which is one of the reasons some say it shouldn’t be called a planet.

So, with all this problems, the issue is not likely to be settled quickly, and the discovery of these additional objects is definitely going to complicate matters. For now, Sedna would still be called a planetoid and Pluto-which is roughly twice its size-a planet.

Note: Xena, or 2003 UB313 by official designation is actually larger than Pluto. If IAU wants to keep Pluto, it would also have to admit Xena AND Ceres. In short, given the choice to kick Pluto out or admit another 3 into its fold (Ceres, Sedna, 2003 UB313), the IAU chose to kick one out. They did that by adding in a novel criteria, which I might delve into in the future. If you’re a Pluto lover and say this sucks, an appeal by the Pluto supporters is underway. It might not go far, but it’s hard to say at the moment.

If you keep your eyes and ears open long enough, something juicy will undoubtedly turn up. The past 72 hours has been very illuminating about specific Singaporean traits. However, I must stress that the tendencies are not to be generalised and applied to all Singaporeans. Here’s an overview (again, it’s not a short read)

First up would be the post-65 generation (65 as in 1965, post-S’porean Independence) Q&A by Straits Times staff that covered the ’06 General Elections. Coincidentally, I was in Singapore briefly during the campaigning period so I wasn’t totally out of the loop. But, I would appreciate it very much if somebody, anybody who could shed some light on who Mr. Brown is! The only politician with the name Brown I have heard before is the Chancellor of the Exchequer (and possibly future UK PM). Yes, Singaporeans are very interested in the ‘New Media’ phenomenon. It is very likely that most of us Malaysians would not have heard of this, since we’re ‘technologically backward’. Personally, I know roughly what is it all about from political developments in the States but I was quite surprised that it is a well known concept here in Singapore.

To shed some light to the uninitiated, New Media in general refers to the birth of new media outlets on the Internet or telephony platforms (PolSci or MassComm people please correct me if I’m wrong). And in case you’re wondering, yes it includes the blogsphere too. My mistake was in forgetting about Singapore’s connectedness to the world, and its citizens desperate want for an alternative news outlet from the usual government controlled sources. This was aided by the fact that the Singaporean government would not censor the New Media (they can’t build their own Great Firewall of China). Here, I must point out that our tech-savvy Pak Lah has announced that he will crackdown on blogs that are slanderous (and IMO, airing sensitive issues). I say, bring it on! I will not hesitate to say this again and again. We Chinese, Indian and Malays are bumiputras in the literal sense of the word, yet some of us are treated like ‘squatters’. Until we have equal playing field, truer meritocracy, freedom to discuss things in public with intelligent discourse and racial issues cease to be used for political gains, we will never be fully multi-racial.

Anyways, in the Q&A sessions, they were again asking the ‘on-the-surface’ questions. They seem to think that with all these blogs, Straits Times will go bust and the Opposition might be able to find equality against the PAP. They may be ‘in the flow’ with the States but their questions have been answered some time ago, just that they didn’t bother finding out the answers themselves. I’ll answer these two questions while giving a message to my fellow politics oriented bloggers. Keep an eye on the US mid-term elections. Developments in Connecticut seem to suggest that political blogs and sites have started to make a difference in the political climate there. If true, we could be witnessing the birth of a powerful political tool. For those who want to make a difference in Malaysia, we might finally get a platform to bypass government media. But is TV and newspapers really coming to their end? I don’t think so. Newspapers, radio and TV came into existence, each threatening their predecessor’s existence. However, as we can see they all survived in their individual forms till present day. Their reach and relevance may seem to diminish with the arrival of New Media, but we must not forget their authority and credibility in providing news. Some will undoubtedly perish, but some will adapt and continue going on. As it stands, they have their own niches to fill, so they will never go extinct just yet.

All right, I’ll put that media issue to rest for the moment. Now, I should move on to a very well known topic: Kiasuism!

I might finally get my hands on a kiasu to study in close detail at last! He’s not Chinese, but he’s nerdish (this description coming from me would definitely raise some eyebrows, I’d bet) and extremely extrovert. Would these characterise him as kiasu? Not necessarily. However, his actions seem to support my current conjecture. See, during project work he nearly took on a group work assignment by himself. I tried to help, but he was literally on top of me and smothering me with bad breath. I admit, I’m the newcomer to the module (I came in on the 4^th seminar and they’ve been there since the start) but he was probably so engaged in excelling and taking charge that I just resigned myself to sitting down and waiting till he’s finally satisfied. He was also practically the only guy giving answers to the lecturer when he wanted some input from the class (again, give a chance to other people to come up with something? You do gain from keeping quiet occasionally). Then, when handing up a writing assignment, he complained about the ‘suckiness’ of his work, his problem of ‘thinking and writing too much’, then showing how ‘much’ he wrote (true, since it’s 1.25 pages for 2 short questions), all without prompting! I know, most successful people do have some of these qualities, but I rarely observed them all being displayed in such quick succession and from the same person! And yes, we do bitch about our work and ‘boast/complain’ about it, but to do it without anyone trying to compare with you? It might just be the competitive streak, jealous/envy at the effort he’s showing, intimidation within me that’s at work but IMHO: There is a fine line between being brilliant and kiasu, but this is definitely Kiasuland material. I’ll just continue with my ‘observations’ and see if I got the bona fide kiasu or not.

The last thing is the Singaporean preoccupation with mugging! Nope, I am not referring to the act of robbing somebody! It’s the S’porean term for rote-studying. Today, we were arguing in Chemistry on the marking breakdown (we’re in a new course, so we get flexibility). The breakdown is as follows: Mid-Term Test (20%), Project+Attendance (20%+10%), Final Exam (50%). The entire course split into roughly 3 major factions: 1) those who want more project marks, 2) those who want greater Final Exam weightage and 3) people who just kept silent.

Personally, I hate rote-learning and exams as it’s dull and monotonous as compared to project work. Plus, we had A-Levels in 2 sections and I have to say I liked the system very much as it allows for better margins at good grades and flexibility. However, some S’porean students in effect declared their intention to flunk project work and aim to score for the module by mugging for the Finals and it had quite a lot of support from other students (you see, we’re dominated by S’porean and M’sian STPM students). While arguing, I was totally surprised and enraged at the statement somebody came up with that ‘projects and presentations are for Business students’ (Note: The quote may not be verbatim). While I am being as accommodating as possible to our host country and its people, I have to say that I think it is BULLSHIT! Of course, I didn’t say that out loud, but I find that notion completely revolting. That was really an eye opener for me, to finally see their respective study styles exposed. I have to say that I’m really happy to have ended up with the USP students, rather than those mindless drones that just come to NUS just to get a degree. I just hope that they’re not ‘true blue muggers’ as I thought, or else this is going to be very boring indeed.

Since it was a stalemate at best (we couldn’t even obtain a simple majority) we gave up for the day and stuck with the current formula. Post ‘voting’ analysis, A called its fellow Singaporeans stupid (I was thinking of the word rigid). A’s view on the situation was quite frightening. A noticed that the PRC students just kept quiet and didn’t vote at all (I was busy thinking of compromise and counter-arguments at that time). The assumption is that they would be happy at more marks allocated to memorising. Since we know that they are very capable at memorising a huge amount of information, the claim was that everyone played right into the PRC’s advantage. From strategic thinking, we’re screwed up. IMHO, they are very capable of grinding us to dust, if it was not for their lack of familiarity with the English language. So, it shows the total opposite of two Singaporean schools of thought. One thinks for itself (mug the way through), and the other one thinks about the big picture. Me? I was just planning to have fun in doing projects! However, given the 2 differing opinion, I sided with the latter. As for how the final weightages are going to be distributed, we’ll just see how it all ends up.

Self Photoshopped image from NASA/ESA/HST

For 76 years, we have known of the tiny object at the ‘edge’ of the Solar System as the rebellious planet that refuses to follow convention. It does not orbit in the same plane as its other 8 siblings, with cheek in tongue it occasionally crosses its big brother’s path (Neptune), and for such a small planet is has an entourage of 3 moons. What’s more, Mike Brown of CalTech discovered that Pluto has bigger pals in its neighbourhood (like Sedna and Xena). What a problematic child.

In the end, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) drew a line and cast Pluto out of the exclusive Solar System Planet Club by voting on the definition of what constitutes a planet in our Solar System (as for exoplanets, it’s a resolution to debate another day). Now where does Pluto sit in the Sol family tree? Kicked from the Planet nuclear family, it’s now sitting in the ‘dwarf planet’ branch at the side. Even here, it’s still slightly small in comparison to its newly discovered brethren. As it now stands, officially the tally of planets is 8. Ceres, Sedna and Xena (or 2003UB313) are now in the group of ‘dwarf planets’ which could number in the hundreds.

Hopefully, the one with an identity crisis has a fixed identity now.

Heh, Mass Dance going on downstairs and here I am blogging and doing side researching. Well, I have work to do, and I have two left feet, so best to stay on my study table. And I hath sinned. I went to McD again! AGAIN!

Sigh, Week 2 and we’re aiming for Tutorial 3 for Mechanics and Waves, Chemistry dioxin presentation, second round of C tutorial and Project 1 of Advanced Calculus involving Hermite polynomials. Oh, add a reading list for Writing and Critical Thinking too. Nope, I can’t get the Danger and Security one, so I took Questioning Evolution and Progress, the next ‘nicest’ one on the list. And yeah, dropped the Nanoscale Science and Technology module since I’m not superman. If you’re asking what the heck is a Hermite polynomial, I’m asking the same question too. However, every good researcher must cover all the bases and I discovered some tidbit for that particular project by accident, like many discoveries. Why Hermite polynomials of all things? Prof. might as well just chuck eigenfunctions or some other ‘chim’ stuff at us from the start! If any of my ESP coursemates found my blog, then they’ll be rewarded with one tidbit I’m about to share.

See, I’m curious about my lecturer’s backgrounds from the start. I’m not saying that I’m a stalker, but it helps to know what kind of background they have so we’ll be able to better understand their PoV and style. The effort paid off right from the start. See, our Prof is not only the HoD of Maths and a First Class Honors Mathematics graduate from UM in its golden days (cue for the oooo part here). His list of publications included something to do with Hermite polynomials! And I suspect it’s his PhD thesis too. Short story, I found some papers to quote for my Project (and I’ll either impress or freak him) and I learnt that you’d better not be smartypants and fabricate something. This would be what I call a good example of ‘useless information’ becoming a ‘gold mine’ instantly.

Ok, I’ll add another one. Our Organic Chem lecturer freaked us by posting almost a full dozen files of presentations, notes and exercises before semester even started. It wasn’t until we first met her that I realised the reason behind it. She looked like she just gotten her PhD quite recently (heard elsewhere that she’s trying secure her professorship or sth, so looks like the teaching staff is under pressure too) and she was previously a lecturer at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Oh, I must stress that the ‘The’ part is in the name itself, and the joke is that THKUST actually stood for The Hong Kong University of Stress and Tension. Thank goodness we’re only in the National University of Stress eh?

University Scholars Seminar came around once again (it’s weekly). It’s not compulsory for me, but it’s essentially the highlight of the week on my schedule. Call me stupid to waste my time attending it, but this is where you get to hear the ‘behind-the-scenes stuff’ and get to ask the ‘meatier questions’, so it’s a valuable event to attend. IMHO, you get background information too but as I’ve managed to keep up with the news and scientific media till lately, it’s all repeat or basic information (it’s partly due to the fact that USP students come from all over NUS). No, I’m not boasting that I’m smart, it’s just that I invested my time in better things rather than things like anime or going out with friends and talk senseless things or plain mugging. As such, this is my main worry being in S’pore, turning into an apathetic, mindless drone. I’ll explain why in a bit.

Today’s talk is about Stem Cell: A New Frontier, conducted by a Dr Ariff Bongso at the Med Fac of NUS. He’s part of ES Cell International’s (ESI) based in Biopolis which is chaired by Dr. Alan Coleman (he helped clone Dolly, whose lecture I also managed to attend in S’pore in 2004) and the pioneer team that first isolated stem cells. To be honest, the fun part is only when he explained why he didn’t get much fame back in 1994 when they isolated stem cells for the first time, and the Q&A session. Oh btw, seems that the fallout from Dr. Hwang’s fiasco was minimal. Researh funding and public support bounced back very quickly. So you biological scientists need not worry about that. Q&A was slightly boring because they were nitpicking and not focusing on the big picture, but at least there were a few good questions that cut straight to the big questions in ST research. The thing is, it would have been more fun to discuss this if they had some background knowledge, which is readily available on the Internet! However, mugging took care of that, so not much in-depth discussions.

I do notice people shunning information as if it’s an infectious disease or something, which is both an irritating and distressing phenomenon. Why do I say that? For example, people come up to me and say, ‘Huei Ming, your blog’s highly technical and bla bla bla’. If you can’t understand the explanation, say so! Don’t try and act as if I’m explaining calculus with hieroglyphs! Or else, don’t say something stupid to me with the implicit meaning that ‘Talking serious stuff is uncool’. That’s just being childish. Plus, if it’s too intellectual, then don’t bother studying medicine, science or engineering. The journals they read is going to give you a stroke for sure. In fact, I think this might be a contributory factor to the decay in the US scientific and economic prowess as they had too much emphasis on luxury. I know that it’s difficult to start off, but once you pick up a dictionary to figure out the parts you don’t understand, or just read an article a day, it’s better than being a brainless layperson on the street. However, I understand that my posts are very very long, which I had warned in advance didn’t I?

That said, I’d better try to resume reading on a ‘normal’ scale on the Internet again. Been slacking off lately, partly because I’m lazy.

You read that right. NUS wanted to enter the Singapore Book of Records by emptying the contents of a Milo truck ASAP (the drink only of course). Well, it was supposed to be starting at 1.15pm but when I arrived at 1.45pm (Phy tutorial was extended as Prof wanted to finish both Tutorials 1 and 2 this week!) it’s still not empty yet.

Now, being as greedy as a Malaysian possibly could I went to ‘contribute’ to the effort. Unfortunately, I had iced Milo earlier on at McD (I need to avoid that damm place, it’s addictive!) so I could only down 4 cups. So sad, huh? Two points. One, the cups are smaller than what we have here in M’sia (looks more like a paper whiskey shot glass to me than a paper cup so the scene is like people downing ‘Milo whiskey’) and they’re very inefficient at giving out the drinks. Looks like we’ll have to do better the next time round.

Okay, I should be sleeping or trying to read up some more on C, or at least do Tutorial 2 for the Mechanics and Waves module.

Oh well, I’m blogging so I should tell you interested readers what happened in the first week? Problem is I don’t know where to start from. The week is basically one long series of lectures, tutorials, preparing for presentation, talks (if I counted correctly, there’s the one by a Harvard graduate about media and politics, entrepreneurship talk, World Bank talk, Singapore Paranomal Investigators with another half a dozen more ‘engagements’ planned for the coming 2 weeks), more talk registrations, walk walk walk and travel travel travel plus naps (no sleeping anymore, just napping every now and then whenever opportunity presents itself). Yeah, that about sums it all. And oh yes, I still remember the weird game of upmanship with Jiayi trying to bitch who’s got the heavier schedule before going for MSL Fri night supper. I think, that shows how hectic and lifeless life is in these parts for some of us.

Fibula came down here to ‘tour’, and I was happy to be able to help him and his family find their way around. It cut into my schedule by quite a bit, but nevertheless it’s a chance to explore the S’pore outside the campus before it gets even worse. The tutorials can wait. Apparently, Bran and I gotten him really infected by LOTRmania and it induced him to get a One Ring of his own. Now, if I have one, and he’s got one which One Ring is going to rule them all? Power sharing? lol! Heh, at least I still hold bragging rights! That is, until he decides to go and get an Evenstar to complete the set and force a draw.

Wilson started his blog, and I discovered ng’s one. That makes 29 blog links on the sidebar here. I haven’t been actively reading all the blogs lately (from the dozen or so I check daily, it’s now down to about 2-3), so I’m getting waaaay behind schedule.

S’pore is freaking hot, or at least my room is! My lights give off heat, my PC gives off heat and I give off heat! Couple that with the fact that my room’s isolated from the wind currents, it’s basically a makeshift sauna! I would have moved to the ESP Computing Lab with a nice conference table and air-con to enjoy at night (we have access to it 24/7) if it wasn’t for the small problem that PGP is in the SE of NUS and the lab is in NW! Plus, as a fellow coursemate noted, it’s freak night if you dare use the Lab at night since the entire floor’s closed for construction except for that tiny portion. Also, you might just run the risk of bumping into ESP couples rendezvousing there (don’t think there’s any yet, but you never know). In short, I’m not desperate enough yet.

Hell, I felt as if I have been suckered by a really huge punch. Today marks the first day of lectures and I’m already pretty exhausted.

Today didn’t start off well. I slept blissfully through my 6 hr mark at 8am with this strange thought that my lecture starts at 10am. In 5 minutes, I jumped out of bed half panicking. Somehow my brain suddenly realised that everyday starts off at 9am. After some mad scramble, I managed to reach the Advanced Calculus module at 9.02. If it’s of any comfort, I wasn’t the last. *snickers* What I suspected was pretty much true. Out of the 102 pages of calculus notes, we went through 10% in just 2 hrs. That would mean roughly a chapter a week.

Then it’s a mad rush to bid for Round 3A. You know what? I think I’ll just stick with 5 modules this semester. I don’t think I’ll be able to survive 6 modules. So it looks like I’m definitely going to spend extra semesters in NUS, no matter how things go (excepting that I suddenly grow a second brain). Oh yeah, I remember some secondary teacher telling me that 3 years is a very short time. When I heard that from the teacher, it really took some willpower to keep from snorting or bursting out in laughter. Come on, we live in a rapidly changing world today. Do you have any idea how packed is life today? Anyway, after 11 days of waiting I got my medical report from UHWC (I was supposed to wait only 7 days). I can’t really be that mad at them since they’re a staff of a dozen serving 6,000 students. That’s like a ratio of 500:1! At least they tried to keep me from waiting (my blood work was missing so they certified a fax copy for me to take on the go). But still, I have to miss Computing and Statistics tomorrow to go and get a Student’s Pass. I just hope they don’t go on and start teaching C straightaway, or else I’m screwed!

Since those 2 items took up much of my 2 hours break, it’s time for 10 minute lunches. It was nearly perfect, but I spent another 10 minutes trying to finish a cup of coffee ASAP. Bummer. It was necessary for without the psychoactive substance caffeine I would have probably K.O.ed by dinnertime.

Next up, 3 hours of Mechanics and Waves from 2 to 4pm. Lecture, mind you, not labs. This time, I barely made it on time. Embarrassingly, my brain wandered off while I was walking there, and I ended up at the 1^st lecture venue, instead of the 2^nd. Better not let that happen again. Oh, it’s not that we get 3 hr lectures weekly (thank goodness!) but our Prof have to go for a conference next week so we have to suffer this week to enjoy next week off. It’s no mean feat, considering most Engin students do a full Mechanics module. We’re supposed to be the ‘best of the best’ (that’s a load of crap, I tell you) and we’re doing ESP so we have to combine Waves into our Mechanics module. Even with a break in the middle of the lecture, it was disorienting to say the least. It was fine until Prof went into 3D vectors. It was quite simple actually, but a majority of us finished A-Levels or STPM last year or earlier so we had to relearn what we forgotten spontaneously. At the end of the lecture, he congratulated us for surviving the first blow, but I believe I speak for most of us when I say we all made it through alive, but we’re all sprawled out on the floor knocked out. I just hope I can aim to finish Tutorials 1 & 2 by Wed.

Then it’s off to get my reading list for the USP module (guys, I think all USP modules has a reading list!). Lucky thing is, we get to use our own USP Multimedia Lab to print and photocopy stuff, so we don’t have to squabble for PCs at the Library. Sad thing is, we still need to pay. At least mine was relatively straightforward. Transcript of Feynman’s lecture, The Economist article, Engines of Creation (the only book I have to read) and a few other historical overviews of nanotechnology. It’s quite a load, so I think I’ll try to finish reading the articles on the MRT tomorrow. Now I better figure out when to go and dabble in MATHLAB and MAPLE.

Then it’s back to PGP at 6pm to recuperate. Stomach doesn’t like cereal and chocolate milk for breakfast, so I’ll probably watch my diet for the rest of the week.

BTW, this might make those of you guys who didn’t end up at the top of the world feel better. So, Who needs Harvard?

P.S.: I’m on the lookout for a cozy place to study. Anyone interested to go scouting with me at University Hall?

This is pathetic. I am at least 4 days late in wishing our host nation! Oh well, in my defence, the past 96 hrs is filled with a hell of a lot of things which would take too much time to list down. I do have a few words for some memorable events though.

First up was watching the National Day fireworks at Raffles Place from Marina Bay. The fireworks beat our M’sians one hands down! Hehehe. Note to self, I’d better stop comparing our birth country against our host country, because the few things M’sia is better at are having more space and cheaper prices! I can’t remember a lot of things because life is becoming blurred (information overload!). It’s Sunday and I really hope I get to spend the entire day in my room preparing for lectures. I have my hundred pages of calculus printed, and they’re nicely stapled up but left unread. Oh, here’s a tip. The NUSSU guidebook said something about an inverted ‘golden road of Oz’ thing in the campus. You’re supposedly able to walk from any Faculty to another without worry of being drenched with rain or shrivelled up by excessive sunlight. I tried it out after the NES Welcome Tea (more like dinner) at the Engin Fac which was after I got my notes printed at the Central Library. Another tip is you’ll be better off with your own printer. My printing session alone costs me $5.10 already at 5 cents apiece! And that’s only one module’s workbin out of 5! Back to the golden roof, I’ve managed to try going from FoE to Biz. IMO, you’d be best lugging an umbrella with you. Remember this, do not blindly follow the yellow roof and you could still get drenched in a rain walking below the yellow roof.

Then Saturday was Rag Day, where it’s basically a day where all the faculties and halls come out with their floats and give a performance. It’s kind of sad for USP, as they’re the first to lead the float possession but there were only a handful of us to cheer them on! In fact, if we have gotten ourselves into a cheer fight with Dentistry or Medicine, we would still lose out flat because we simply have insufficient voice power! As for the performances, I think I can summarise it this way: Sensuous, ostentatious, flamboyant and aggressive. I think Biz Ad has the most emotional performance (think Memoirs of a Geisha), but there are a few good performances. I didn’t stay till the end because 3 of us left early to go see the nE clan in action at WCG Singapore and lend some support. However, the clan was so engrossed in their match and we can’t really see their DotA progress, so I went off and explored WCG S’pore. It’s not as big as I expected, but it’s still huge. Oh well, at least I managed to get my hands on a Core Duo 2 Extreme system, just for 15mins of Counterstrike 1.6. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see how much such a powerul system can take (it’s not even CSS and there was only 10 players max at any given time!). Sadly, nE didn’t make it through the first round but let’s hope they’ll fare better next year. Practice more guys! We want to see you guys win, so we can mooch! Muahahahaha!

Lin Sien blogged about today too, so if you want you can go over to his blog and read what we have done today (we joined up with nE at KFC onwards). Oh, I managed to get some time off to watch Superman Returns! Now just some extra time off and I’ll be able to watch War of the Worlds too. Luckily, that 2 movie passes I won in SingTel’s lucky draw has an expiry date next year, so I’ll have lots of time in planning who to give that extra slot to. At least in theory, that is.

P.S.: I realise that I’m using a lot of acronyms for my recent posts. I apologise for the blurness this would cause, but S’poreans are fond of them for a reason: They save time!

I’ll probably be busier and shall not be blogging more often than slightly necessary. In fact, I might just dispense with spellchecking and just leave any irritating typos as it is (to all former Ed Bdians and linguists do forgive my less than perfect writings due to time constrains).

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First up, my room’s is now in ‘habitable’ status after streamlining. The problem is my PC occupies roughly half of my table space, leaving almost no space for working/studying! As my fellow readers may recall, this is exactly what I’m worried about. The study space is simply inadequate for a space hog like me. The rest is still bearable. For now that is. I can still live with the fact that I’m on Level 3, and the water dispenser is on Level 1, the fact that the idiots who built this place never realised that THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO NEED SHOWER HEADS TALLER THAN 160 cm! What else, a sink in my communal washroom’s blocked up (darn, my favourite one too, for some reason), my block’s laundry room is closed, dryer time can only be purchased in 60 min blocks (when clothes take 90 mins to dry so two people better do laundry together so you wouldn’t waste that 30 mins), food here is cutthroat (many thanks for the homecooked food tonight guys, I’m sorry that I forgot to thank you all profusely before I left) and I don’t have any place to lock up my valuables (at least my demand draft is now in the bank, so there’s no money to steal here, only bulky electronics). In case my readers think I’m just another sissy who’s never left home before, I assure you that I’m still one huge notch below those S’poreans who actually brought maids here to clean their Type A rooms! It’s just that being from a middle class family, I expect on par facilities, not idiotically prepared ones! Ceesh.

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On an unrelated note, one of my mice had a fatal injury and had to be laid to rest. Of course, I’m talking about electronic ones. Come on, you can’t honestly expect me to rear rodents in my 3×3 ‘prison cell’! What do you think I am, nuts? (crazy yes, irrational a bit, nuts hell no). The bugswatter injury I gave the mouse was apparently too much, so I got a new mouse for a replacement. Now, I’m the owner of the Logitech® LX5 Cordless Optical Mouse! It seems small, but I think it can fit into my hand quite comfortably. Need to field test it at least once soon.

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Meet my newest addition to the family!

Logitech.com

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They gave a 3 year warranty with it, which means I continued my original 5 year warranty for the mouse. However, it seems that Logitech gives 5 year warranties for them now from the 3 years stated on the packaging so I could potentially end up with a 7 year warranty! I just love Logitech! So, in the meantime I’ll have plenty of time to junk my Logitech® G1 Optical Mouse before using the LX5.

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I’ll see how much this sleek baby can do before giving out!

Logitech.com

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Just great! Farewell Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse, you’ve served us well just like your two other siblings. May you rest in peace.

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Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse (2004-2006)

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littlewhitedog.com

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I’ll have to end this now, so best to do what I had pledged to do. Someone passed me this set of pictures earlier in the evening and I found them very very impressive!

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sharmineishak.deviantart.com

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For more pictures of Kai Sern and Shen Li, please go over here for the complete archive at Sam’s gallery.